Rescuers searching for the wreckage of the Indonesian airliner that crashed into the ocean with 62 people on board say that have located the plane’s black box flight recorders. Sriwijaya Air Flight 182 – a Boeing 737-500 – took off from Jakarta on Saturday on route to Pontianak, on the Indonesian side of Borneo, when it lost contact at 2:40 p.m. local time, 11 nautical miles north of Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. All 62 passengers are said to have perished.
The head of Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas), Rasman MS, said that the black boxes had been located but that efforts to recover them were hampered by debris in the water.
“It’s going to be an around-the-clock operation,” Rasman MS told reporters. “There will be no breaks. The sooner we can find the victims, the better.”
The AFP newswire reported that 2,600 personnel are involved in the search as well as dozens of boats and helicopters, more than 50 ships and 13 other aircraft.
